Warren Mitchell was star of In Sickness and in Health alongside Carmel McSharry.
Photograph: Allstar/BBC/Sportsphoto Ltd

Warren Mitchell, who played Alf Garnett in long-running BBC sitcom Till Death Us Do Part, has died at 89. A spokesman said the actor had had been “cracking jokes to the last”.

Warren Mitchell – in pictures

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The news of his death was revealed on Twitter by his greatnephew, Jerry Barnett, who described him as the “last of his generation” and a “wonderful and funny man”.

Mitchell’s death was later confirmed by a statement from his family. “He has been in poor health for some time, but was cracking jokes to the last,” it read.

“Silly moo” may not be the most erudite catchphrase going, but it will forever be associated with Mitchell, who regularly levelled it at his TV co-star Dandy Nichols, who played his wife in Till Death Us Do Part and the spinoff series In Sickness and in Health.

Una Stubbs played his daughter in the show and Anthony Booth, father of Cherie Booth QC, played his liberal-minded “randy scouse git” son-in-law.

Mitchell was often called upon to defend the popular impact of his role as the “opinionated and chauvinist” Garnett. As a leftwinger in later life, he was concerned to draw a line between his own views and those of his screen character.

“The script had been turned down by four actors and I leaped at the chance of playing such an awful man,” he said five years ago, adding: “The line I’ll always cherish was his comment on Gandhi’s hunger strike. ‘Bloody Ghandi, wouldn’t eat his dinner so they gave him India.’ Johnny Speight was a wonderful, wonderful writer.”

But Mitchell did once admit that some who knew him believed he shared characteristics with Garnett. “As my wife, Connie, once said to me, ‘You are like that awful Alf Garnett, only he’s funny and you’re not,’” he said.

Although the actor, born Warren Misell in Stoke Newington, north London, in 1926, will be remembered for playing the bigoted and ill-informed Cockney dockworker created by Speight, he had actually studied physics at Oxford before giving it up to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

He won two Olivier awards for stage portrayals of Arthur Miller characters; first in 1979 as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman 1979 and then in 2004, when he played a cantankerous old Jewish furniture dealer in The Price.

During the successful run of this play Mitchell suffered a mild stroke, but he was back onstage a week later. Mitchell had also suffered with chronic pain for more than 20 years, which was caused by a nerve-damaging illness.

The actor was a supporter of the British Humanist Association and had been married since 1951 to Connie Wake, who appeared in the early 1960s television crime drama Maigret. The couple had three children: Rebecca, Daniel (who is also an actor) and Anna, known as Georgia.